


Powder Keg

by papyrocrat



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-08
Updated: 2010-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-17 14:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire escaped more than once that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Powder Keg

**Author's Note:**

> Gift fic for . Thanks for the beta, 

Claire drives until her hands start to shake.She’s naturally cautious (no, no, not naturally, completely artificially, many thanks to Topher for the pathological risk-aversion) and she knows it’s dangerous to drive while she can’t concentrate or control her extremities.Dangerous like traffic, and guns, and sub-par architecture, and immeasurable pollution – no.She can’t think like that, or she’ll go back, and if she goes back, it’s the chair and maybe the Attic, or maybe she’ll be gone and Whiskey –whoever she was - will take back what’s hers.

Claire realizes with a start that she’s been sitting in the parked car lost in her bitter thoughts for five or six minutes, and in her mild surprise, she looks up and accidentally into the rear-view mirror.The glare of her scars in the sun is a final blow, a small horror, but it numbs her panic enough for her to make a decision.

She’s going shopping.

She turns the car around (somehow she knows her way around L.A. even though she was meant to live her life cowering in a basement; she also knows the 14ème in Paris like the back of her hand, thanks to a junior year abroad that never happened) and heads for a nondescript mall, one likely to be relatively empty on a warm and sunny Wednesday.

Claire walks in through a department store, and the scent of a hundred perfumes and a thousand miserable shoppers overwhelms her.A large blond man passes by her left shoulder.Her heart stops, but miraculously, so does the rush of panic in her brain.The terror aches, but she clings to it, because she knows it’s hers.It’s what lets her find the mall map and hone in on the long list of makeup specialty stores.

She gets turned around the first couple of times she walks away from the map (and isn’t that just apt), but eventually she slips into a brightly-lit chain. It’s bright white and impersonal, like a hospital that specializes in lipstick therapy.She doesn’t feel any particular joy or comfort or annoyance or familiarity.The store is just strange, though she supposes she shouldn’t be too surprised that Topher hasn’t prepared her for this particular eventuality.

And then she sees her.

At first, she thinks it’s the same reflex that convinced her that the man behind her with the Macy’s bags was Alpha, an instinct to cling to any mirage of familiarity in a world where the depth of her loneliness makes her heart ooze down her abdomen.But this time she’s right.The dark-haired woman in the next aisle is November.

No.Not November.Madeleine.There’s no November.Not until the next devastated beautiful girl leans back in the chair.

Claire didn’t notice Madeleine when she’d first walked into the store because she hasn’t moved, not this whole time.She’s staring vacantly at the nail polishes, as if she’s never seen pinks and reds before in her life.Claire, of course, knows November looks lovely in all the shades of the ruby, and so she thinks maybe Madeleine’s indecision comes from something like her own utter disorientation.

Claire loses track of how long she’s been staring when she snaps out of her mind to see Madeleine staring back at her scars.She moves to hide her _foreheadcheekmouth_ when Madeleine smiles with her full mouth (but only the bottom half of her face; Claire knows that smile even though she’s never seen a mirror) and apologizes.“You must have thought….” she trails off, too kind to mention the scars, “no, no, you just look really familiar.”

Claire thinks for a moment.Does she explain that she is familiar to the memoryless killer lurking beneath the lovely gray eyes, does she bring Madeleine into her secret and create a tiny world of two, of people-who-know?It’s a thought both attractive and terrifying, and not just because of what Rossum would make of such a situation.It’s too much, too dangerous.She can’t.

But Madeleine is so alone too, and she’s just woken up in a world of grief.

Claire dances around it.“I’m a doctor.Maybe you were one of my patients, once?”

Madeleine drops all pretense relating to the nail polishes and meets her eyes.“Maybe that’s it.”Madeleine hasn’t learned to tell small lies about anthropology class junior year at UCLA, but then, neither has Claire.Madeleine, unlike Claire, has the terminally calm attitude of someone with nothing left to lose, and so her breathing stays preternaturally even when she casually offers to solve the mystery over a smoothie in the food court.

Claire hesitates.“My treat,” wheedles Madeleine as she gives a tight, bitter smile, “I’ve recently come into some money.”

They’ll probably be hunting her down for any number of transgressions anyway.Claire throws caution to the slow, cool breeze, and there’s a little less heartbreak scratched across Madeleine’s face.

“I think I’m done here, if you want to pay for that.”Claire looks down at the round case of foundation in her left palm.She’s ashamed of her vanity, repulsed by her scars, embarrassed by her indecision, but Madeleine gives her a just-us-girls smile, and picks up a lip gloss so Claire won’t have to wait alone in line.

November had smiled a lot too, but her smiles had never been nuanced or sad, never been used instead of her sweet, sincere words.November is gone now, but Claire wants to see the corners of Madeleine’s eyes fold one more time.

Claire has never wanted anything before, not really.

They take the escalator into the food court.Claire keeps her eyes trained on Madeleine and clenches the handrail, but she still jumps when the teenage boys behind them start shouting and darting past.Madeleine rolls her eyes, and Claire’s lips tense as she turns her head away from them.

Maybe it’s because they have no small talk to make about television, or family, or their days at work, or maybe it’s years of long ( _and impossible!_ Topher shouts in her head, hopping from foot to foot, and she clenches her teeth and imagines yanking him out of her office by his annoying left ear) training as Dolls, but they chat about the relative merits of their smoothies.They move on to talk of foods in general, and Madeleine makes her laugh a little with tales of her miserable cooking.(“I mean, how do you ruin pasta?You spend so long searching for your sieve, the one which is buried under all the Tupperware in your oven, that all the water boils down and the pasta sticks to the bottom of the pot and burns, is how.Smoked, blackened ravioli.It’s my specialty.”)

An hour goes by, and Madeleine makes her apologies ( _excuses_ , Claire’s mind hisses) about a massage appointment.Claire feels her face fall, even as Madeleine offers to call upstairs to see if they have an opening.The thought of a stranger touching her, of someone figuring out what it is she needs, makes her head spin, and so Claire has to decline.She makes up her own story (well, it’s not really a lie either) about needing some new clothes.

They stand and collect their purses.“I know this sounds a little pathetic, but this is the most fun I’ve had in,” Madeleine pauses, and Claire knows she is thinking _maybe years_ “a while.Would you like to meet back in an hour and a half and see a terrible romantic comedy or something?”

Claire doesn’t hesitate this time, even with the prospect of strangers and darkness and other unknown quantities lurking around the concept _movie_ , and then Madeleine smiles again.Not as brightly as November would, but it reaches her eyes, and Claire starts to wonder jealously if it is possible that Madeleine will be okay.

They kiss on the cheek like old friends.Claire pretends for a moment that Madeleine isn’t her oldest, or only, friend, and she’s so swept off her feet by the idea that she does the unthinkable, and tilts her face in towards Madeleine’s.

Madeleine’s new lip gloss is strawberry-flavored, and her cheek is smooth under Claire’s palm, and her fingers are light and sure under Claire’s ear.This isn’t the first time either of them has kissed a stranger – it’s probably not the first time they’ve kissed each other – and Claire wonders if it was this sweet every time.

They separate after a minute, or a hundred years.Claire’s anxieties come back to life, though a few of them are muffled now, and that feels like a victory of unspeakable proportions.“Go, get your massage,” Claire urges.“It’ll help you with that bad hip.”

Madeleine’s face breaks out of afterglow and into suspicion, and Claire recoils. “How do you know I have a bad hip?”

Mellie had tried to help Paul move his furniture, and been too besotted to tell him what she could and couldn’t do.

“Doctor, remember?I took a guess from your stride.”Madeleine buys it, probably only because she wants to, but that’s a comfort all on its own.“It’ll be good for you.I’ll be here.”

She watches Madeleine leave her, and then, ever practical, heads upstairs to shop for clothes.In her new life, she will have flat shoes and jeans and tan lines.She will drop that ridiculous foundation into the nearest trash can.After only forty-three minutes (not that she’s checking or anything) a gentle hand falls on her shoulder.She starts to turn, smiling, when she feels the unmistakable pinch of a needle in her arm.

She doesn’t react for a moment; doesn’t even yank back her arm. _Fight_ wars with _flight_ until she realizes with impotent rage that she can do neither.She has no choice left but confrontation, so she summons courage she’s sure she was never given and turns around to glare defiantly.Boyd’s face swims into view, and Claire’s eyes go wide in shock as she drowns. 

Before Whiskey goes under completely, her last thought is that _November is beautiful_.


End file.
